Save Me
by sendricamp
Summary: Beca Mitchell saved her life.


Maybe her problem started when he took her into the bedroom at that one house party when she was fourteen. She never said no, let him do what he wanted, and that was that. She suddenly became another conquest, and the feeling it put in the center of her chest took root. It sunk its teeth in and refused to let go, and that was when she changed. Daddy's little girl was growing up. She called it growing up. To anyone who paid attention, it might have seemed more like a desperate cry for help.

If you had asked her when she was little if she would ever find herself rebeling from everything she had been taught, she would have laughed. She would never mess up. She was perfect. She was never going to let her daddy down.

When she was fifteen, she snuck off with some college boys to Chicago for a weekend. When she returned home, she thought her dad was going to explode his face had been so red. He grounded her, she learnt to jump from the second story without hurting herself. Drinking. Smoking.

When she was seventeen, her father confronted her as she was sneaking in, still drunk from a party she had been at hours earlier. He didn't hold back, screaming inches from her face, putting her down more and more until her stomach was so twisted that she had to run to the bathroom and vomit. When she emerged, he picked up where he had left off, berating her for tears. She was weak, and he was sick of having something so weak as a child. It was step up or get out.

So she stepped up. Then she got out.

Barden was an escape. She could pretend like nothing in her life was wrong. No one knew her, and she wasn't going to let anyone learn.

Then there was Chloe.

They had her rooming with the most outgoing and outspoken person she had ever met. Chloe didn't have a sense of boundaries. She wanted to know more about her blonde roommate. But that seed in her chest had grown. She didn't want to open up to her curious new friend. Instead, she brushed her off, ignoring her more often that hearing what she had to say.

But Chloe wouldn't give up.

She roped the blonde into trying out for the a cappella groups, and, shockingly, one of them wanted them both.

So they were Barden Bellas.

Now she had to see Chloe in their dorm and at rehearsals.

But that started to be okay. Chloe was a welcome distraction from the dictatorship that the Bellas seemed to be. It stayed that way for three years, and then it happened.

Pukegate.

The Bellas made it to the finals, the first all-female group to do so, and they had decided on giving Aubrey the solo.

Aubrey. Who gets physically ill when stressed.

There was only one way it was going to end, and they lost because of her.

Chloe tried to help ease her mind over the summer, but she was determined. They were going to return to the finals and win. They had to. Aubrey felt like the rest of her life depended on that.

So they spent the summer going over their plan.

Bikini ready bodies.

The Sign. Eternal Flame. Turn The Beat Around.

It was foolproof.

Nothing could stop them.

But then Beca Mitchell walked onto the stage.

Beca had ear monstrosities. Beca had tattoos. Beca had an attitude.

Aubrey wanted her. Aubrey wanted her more than she had wanted anything in her entire life.

So she did what any normal human would do in such a situation.

She drove Beca away.

Denying her suggestions. Yelling at Chloe, even so much as telling her to go stay with whatever frat boy she was sleeping with instead of coming back to the dorm, when she so much as uttered a peep in defense of the younger Bella.

Then Beca cost them their last chance.

Aubrey knew she wasn't a Bella.

So, of course, it killed her when Beca walked away.

But she couldn't let anyone else know that, could she?

All of a sudden, when she had accepted her college a cappella career as over, they were back in the finals, and Chloe had called Beca.

Of course Chloe had called Beca.

Because Chloe knew Aubrey's secret.

Aubrey didn't want to give up control. Not yet. Not unless it was on her own terms.

So she let go.

She let go, and Beca came back.

And Beca made them better, just like Chloe had said.

Beca made them amazing, actually.

Beca was why they won.

As the other Bellas were climbing onto their cheap rental bus they had driven to finals in, Aubrey had pulled Beca back, pressing her to the brick wall of the building and kissing her.

When Beca kissed her back, she felt that seed in the pit of her chest let go.

Aubrey didn't know if she would ever be able to tell her, but Beca Mitchell saved her life.


End file.
